Rachel Reeves Leaves Pubs in the Lurch as Labour’s Cost Crisis Burdens Struggling Boozers

Lager clouts

RACHEL Reeves promised before last year’s Budget to help struggling pubs — but ended up massively increasing their business rates.

After an outcry, the said it hadn’t been intentional and promised an emergency bailout.

Rachel Reeves’ package offers nothing to protect boozers from the crippling rises in National Insurance, minimum wage and energy costs inflicted by LabourCredit: PA

Yesterday — too late for those and bars which have already been forced to call a final Last Orders — we got the details.

includes a 15 per cent discount on rates this year — saving the average pub just £31 a week — followed by a two-year freeze.

There is nothing to protect boozers from the crippling rises in , and inflicted by Labour.

And there was zero help for other hospitality businesses like and . In other words it is — at best — half-measures.

Since the Budget, thousands of pubs have barred Labour MPs.

If they try to pop back into their local this weekend, they might find they’re still very far from welcome.

Raw deal 1

BRITAIN should, of course, have a trade relationship with .

But too often it appears that in order to get the deals over the line.

Spying on an industrial scale. The hacking of No10’s phones.

Waving through plans for a super-embassy despite fears it will be a hub for even more espionage.

Having our car industry flooded with .

The madness of buying tens of thousands of Chinese solar panels built using electricity from coal-fired power stations, while banning new drilling for North Sea oil here at home.

Swallowing a £2billion bill for decommissioning a plant.

No doubt, the Prime Minister will boast of having secured hundreds of millions of pounds of investment by the time he flies home from .

The question is: at what price?

Raw deal 2

LABOUR’S “one in, one out” return scheme for illegal migrants was supposed to deliver just that.

But with grim inevitability, so far 350 have arrived from France — yet .

Meanwhile the other much-trumpeted element of — — shows no signs of succeeding.

The one in, one out fiasco is not the first time we’ve been done over by the French in a ruinously dear migrant deal.

And, with equally grim inevitability, you can bet it won’t be the last.